Books’ Prices and Writing’s Value: Careful What We Asked For?

Posted on by Chris The Story Reading Ape

Excerpt from a very interesting article / discussion by Editor-in-Chief of Publishing Perspectives, Porter Anderson, on Writer Unboxed:

Blurring ‘Our Dignity, Our Value’

“The biggest issue is one that will be difficult for us to recover from…the degradation of our worth as creatives.”

That line is from a piece here at Writer Unboxed a year ago, in May 2015. Our colleague Heather Webb, in As Writers, What Are We Worth?, was anticipating a groan heard ’round the world.

Last month, when I led a round-table discussion at Berlin’s Publishers’ Forum, our topic was “Re-Thinking Ebook Sales and Understanding the Consumers.” But what drew the biggest response was book pricing.

To read the rest of the article, click on the link or Porter’s photo below:

Books’ Prices and Writing’s Value

Porter Anderson

12 thoughts on “Books’ Prices and Writing’s Value: Careful What We Asked For?”

  2. Reblogged this on Smorgasbord – Variety is the spice of life and commented:
    The Story Reading Ape has sourced a link to an interesting article that discusses book pricing.. up to now it was a fairly straight forward formula to work out the cost of a print book. But if we are just removing the cost of printing from the equation, why are we devaluing our part in the formula by charging so little for the Ebook?

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  3. I too, am with floridaborne. I got out of the commercial game a year ago and have never regretted that decision. Chasing rainbows involved a 40 hour social media work week, all for a handful of sales and many superficial “I want to use you so I can make sales” connections who ignored me completely. The numbers game is an illusion. I now have my books for free on The Internet Archive which is more gratifying and leaves me time to have a life and write for ME.

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  4. Totally love floridaborne’s comment here! I write because the bug inside me just won’t go away. I have to write. It makes me feel alive, more then anything else. Writing is wonderful experience.

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  5. When I see articles like this, I think back to the reason I write. I write for the sheer joy of it, and when I hold the book in my hands for the first time, it means more to me than a diamond, ruby and emerald tiara. Not that I’d want something as heavy as a tiara on my head, but I could sell it for a fortune and afford to pay an ad agency to market my book. 🙂

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